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61st Annual Meeting of the German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC) as part of the Neurowoche 2010
Joint Meeting with the Brazilian Society of Neurosurgery on the 20 September 2010

German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)

21 - 25 September 2010, Mannheim

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Comparison of the cerebrospinal fluid infection rate associated with the implantation of external ventricular drainage by the use of the different types of drainage systems

Meeting Abstract

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  • Michal Lajcak - Department of Neurosurgery, Klinikum Augsburg, Germany
  • Nikolai G. Rainov - Department of Neurosurgery, Klinikum Augsburg, Germany
  • Volkmar Heidecke - Department of Neurosurgery, Klinikum Augsburg, Germany

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie. 61. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (DGNC) im Rahmen der Neurowoche 2010. Mannheim, 21.-25.09.2010. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2010. DocV1618

doi: 10.3205/10dgnc091, urn:nbn:de:0183-10dgnc0916

Published: September 16, 2010

© 2010 Lajcak et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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Objective: The authors explored the rate of the cerebrospinal fluid infection (CFI), characteristics of primary disease as well as the group of the patients due the relationship between the different types of the external ventricular drainage (EVD) used in this cases.

Methods: This is a retrospective study of 403 patients with 529 EVD implanted because of secondary hydrocephalus or measure of intracranial pressure within a 3 years 2006–2008 in our neurosurgical department. Drainage associated CFI including symptoms, kind and duration of drainage utilization, type of used system - polyurethane or silver-impregnated ventricular catheters, and kind of primary disease, therapy and outcome were recorded.

Results: The authors found an account of 29/403 (7.1%) CFI. A pathogen was detected in all cases with CFI, coagulase-negative staphylococci were found in a number of 20/29 (70%) of these infections. There were different results with statistical significance on CFI in between the polyurethane EVD – Spiegelberg 3XL 11/145 (7.6%) and Codman ventricular catheter 4/29 (13.8%) versus silver-impregnated ventricular catheters Spiegelberg Silverline 14/228 (6.1%).

Conclusions: This study provides data on ventricular drain associated CFI in combination with type of an EVD used by the procedure. Significantly better results in the CFI rate by silver-impregnated catheter compared to polyurethane catheters have been seen in this study. Comparison of these results with other studies is difficult because of different surveillance parameters, case definitions and exploring methods.